


dust to dreams/dreams to dust

by postfixrevolution



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Canon Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, F/M, Growing Up, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, future kids as kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4567335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I wanna be a hero just like you!" he says as he sits down, flashing her a grin that makes her dizzy all over again.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>alternatively: heroes, heroines, and two kids that are each others earth, sky, and stars</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer.
> 
> Unbeta-ed, so forgive any of my silly, little mistakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so begins my descent into madness. Oh wait, I meant Fire Emblem: Awakening. (Same thing.)

The young boy stops in his tracks and gasps, earthen eyes alight with a sizzling, restless energy. Those eyes could could move mountains, maybe, a young brunette thinks. Her unruly pigtails bounce on either side of her head as she skids to a stop, little feet scratching along the ground and kicking up dust clouds the size of dream clouds. They're huge and both children are sent into coughing fits, choking on earth and unvoiced wishes. 

"Why'd you stop, Morgan?" Cynthia chimes, tilting her head to one side. Her hair brushes her neck like feathers, light and soft. If only her hair weren't so dull a dark brown like her father's, she could pretend there was a colorful bird atop her shoulder, a majestic creature worthy of a pirate queen. Instead, she blows her brown bangs out of her field of vision and watches her companion stare down the path with chestnut eyes. With his cobalt blue hair and eyes the color of earth, he was striking, like a child of the ground and the night sky. 

"Morgan?" she prods again, waving a hand in front of his face. He blinks rapidly, flinching as if jarred from a daydream. "Are you okay?" 

A brilliant smile appears on his face, the sparkling stars to his sky. "I'm great!" he responds. Cynthia mirrors his smile, giggling along as he pulls their fingers together and twirls them in a lopsided circle. She feels herself spin like the moon that spins around the earth. 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Morgan!" she gasps between laughs. "I'm getting dizzy! Slow dowwwn!" 

"Haha, me too," he agrees, slowing them to a stop and holding his head in his hands. "Sorry I made you dizzy, Cynthy," he adds. "I was just happy because I thought of something amazing!" 

Cynthia plops herself on the dirt path, leaning back and feeling the dust and pebbles press into her palms. Her legs and bare feet are sprawled in front of her, almost blindingly pale in the blazing sun. She wriggles her dirt covered toes and pats the ground beside her expectantly. Morgan deposits himself at her side with his legs folded. His posture is that of a prince. 

"I realized that I wanna be a hero just like you!" he says as he sits down, flashing her a grin that makes her dizzy all over again. 

"Me?" she echoes incredulously. 

"Yeah!" he chirps, staring up at the sky. It's cloudless and vibrant, the kind of lively blue she likes to call her own eyes. "I'm going to have cool adventures against evil villains, and I'm going to die doing something _super_ heroic, like saving the world or something!" 

Morgan's words hit her at the same time his infectious excitement does, and her stomach twists uncomfortably. 

"You _better_ not die, Morgan!" she warns, punching him on the arm. He rubs the spot tenderly, but giggles all the same. The musical sound pulls at the downward tilt of her pouted lips, urging them bend up and dance in a flutter of lovely smiles and laughs. 

"If you say I can't die, Cynthy, then I won't. I promise!" he affirms, nodding resolutely; there is an indescribable beauty in his whole hearted reply, and sky eyes commit his words and his expression to memory. 

"Then I'm sure you'll be a great hero!" Cynthia confirms, jumping up from the ground and grandly placing her hands on her hips. Beneath her, his earthen eyes light up again — the eyes that will move mountains — and he gazes up at her as if _she_ were the one with the sky hair and the earth eyes, so ethereally enthralling. 

"Probably not as great as you," he shrugs, like it is a fact rather than a compliment, and he's never been better at making her smile than now. "But I swear I'll try." Her cheeks almost ache as she offers a hand to him and he lets her pull him up, her brown pigtails bobbing and his cobalt strands rustling around his too-big ears. 

Their clothes are covered in ground and their eyes are covered in stars, and as they race each other home, she doesn't feel the wind tearing at her tangled hair or the pebbles lodging themselves into her bare feet; she feels the earth laughing with her and the wind running beside her, and thinks that this boy beside can be a better hero than her, or no hero at all, as long as he is beside her and she's right next to him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even hardcore ship these two but thEY WORK SO WELL I'M SCREAMING THEY'RE SO CUTE


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta-ed, yet again. Forgive any mistakes!

The young man stops in his tracks and gasps, earthen eyes widened in shock. Those eyes promised her the world, someday, a brunette recalls. Her pigtails, matted with dirt and blood and now long enough to brush her shoulders, flutter wildly as she throws her lance head into the undead monster before her. Her companion's name is on her lips before the purple smoke of the fallen beast clears, tearing through her throat just as she tears through the noxious cloud with the raw intensity and desperate power of a heroine wronged. 

" _Morgan!_ " she shrieks, jumping off her pegasus and sprinting toward him as fast as her feet can carry her. The heavy thumps of her boots against the ground blend into each other, a haphazard rhythm that is fast, but no where near quick enough to match the panicked staccato in her chest. Her lance swings dangerously beside her, the cool metal shaft slapping continuously at the back of her calves. Shaky breaths, a blend of panic and fatigue, shake her petite frame, and she tosses the weapon aside, nearly screaming as she pushes her legs the last few paces toward Morgan. 

There's a shrill whimper as his fingers fall slack at his sides, a sickeningly familiar clatter as his sword hits the ground, and Cynthia feels her ankle roll and her body tumble forward in a flurry of limbs and dirt. The thud of his knees hitting the ground is indiscernible from the sound of her skittering across it, and when she rolls to a stop before him, they're both choking on dust clouds the size of childish dream clouds. She pushes herself up with calloused hands, numb to the pebbles digging into her skin, and blinks away tears from her sky colored eyes. Morgan smiles a bloody smile at her, star-bright teeth stained a dark crimson, and somehow he still looks like the night sky: a deep cobalt with stars hidden beneath the sanguine haze of dystopia. 

"Cynthy," he mutters weakly, a nickname she hasn't heard in years. It sounds almost foreign to her ears, some arcane language that should be used to weave spells instead of the tumultuous symphony in her chest. It doesn't fit, not with his pained smile or her dirty, blood-stained fingernails. Nothing about him is perfectly aligned — his night sky hair and his ground colored eyes; his childhood nicknames and his steady, mature voice; the serene smile on his face and the gaping sword wound in his torso. 

"Oh gods, oh gods, _what do I do?_ " Cynthia gasps, breath coming in short, erratic puffs. Her slender fingers tremble as they hover before his chest, trying to look for someway to help, to save him, as blood drips thickly onto her too-pale skin. Sky blue eyes blink rapidly, a searing glaze of tears blurring and unfocusing her vision. There's three stab wounds, then one; he has two injuries, spinning dizzyingly around each other and then everything is just a bleeding, brilliant, scarlet, scarlet _red_. 

"Cynthia, are you alright?" he whispers, wrapping shaky, sticky fingers around her own. There's blood on both of their hands, a morbid matching set, and she clasps his hands tightly. His grip is too loose, so she tightens her own hold on him, the lifeline holding onto the dying man. Her tears feel like fire down her cheeks, burning tracks down the dusty paths of her face. 

"I'm the one who should be saying that!" she cries, bringing his hands up to her face and brushing her lips against the back of his hand. "Ahh, what kind of hero am I," she moans, "not even able to save one person?" The sticky residue coats her chapped lips as she talks, but she doesn't let it stop her from kissing each one of his bloodied knuckles and soaking salty tears into the tanned expanse of his skin. 

"My hero, of course," he responds immediately, a weak chuckle bubbling past his lips. Morgan coughs, a heart wrenching sound that splatter small flecks of red across the front of her armor, and Cynthia can't help the pained wince that escapes her. 

"No, I... I'm not," she stammers, rapidly blinking past another flood of tears. "That monster was headed toward _me_ , and that lance was meant for _me_ ," she insists thickly. She tears her gaze away from his hands to meet his earthen eyes. The young man offers a rueful smile, tears of his own threatening to tumble down the curve of his cheeks. Just as much as the sky cannot force the earth to budge, the earth can't tell a lie to the sky that surrounds it and knows it almost as well as it knows itself. "You're the hero here, Morgan." 

He laughs again, coughs again, and Cynthia feels her heart stop again and again at each sound. "Well, I said I'd become one, didn't I? When we were younger. A hero just like you." 

She sniffles, a pained chuckle falling past her lips despite herself. "Of course you'd remember that," she laughs, sniffling and trying to smile past her chattering teeth. The sticky blood on her lips tugs at the dry skin of her mouth every time she speaks, and the taste of metal slowly diffuses into her mouth; the only reason she's able to keep herself from keeling over in disgust is Morgan's lips painted the same shade of scarlet. 

"But I did it, didn't I?" he responds. "I'm a hero! Just like you, Cynthy." 

She doesn't respond, a shaky gasp barely pushing past the tightness in her throat as she pulls his hands toward her chest, rubbing circles against his the backs of his hands. With her head angled downward, her dark brown hair falls into her face. It's the color of the earth, she remembers Morgan pointing out one spring day. They were kids turning into teens and she was sprawled out with her head in his lap on the riverbank. She was reading flower fortunes, telling him she wished her hair were as beautiful a vibrant lilac as the petals. He told her that her hair was too pretty an earthen brown to need pinks and purples: earthy and wholesome and so beautiful that any honest man would know that the goddess of harvest herself blessed Cynthia's hair to so rich a chestnut hue. He floored her right then and there, and as she learned that it was okay to love herself, she also learned that she was a thousand times more in love with him. Morgan wipes the tears from her eyes now just as he did then, with fingers curling into the hair at the nape of her neck and the pads of his thumbs smoothing at the tender skin below her wet eyes. 

"You're gonna make me cry if you cry," he jokes weakly, voice strained and already thick with tears. 

"Well, whose fault do you think that is?" she snaps, wrapping her small digits over his hands and pulling them away from her face. The feeling of blood coating her skin has long since been numbed, and all she can feel his his trembling hands in hers, fingers intertwined and palms pressed close. "You said you wouldn't die," she whispers shakily. "You _promised_." 

A hollow chuckle, earthen orbs flickering away from her own. "Did I?" he murmurs, and she has to pry her fingers free from his so she can hold his head, bringing his eyes up to hers. He meets her gaze with a reluctance that makes her stomach twist. 

"You broke your promise," Cynthia sniffles. " _What kind of hero breaks a promise?_ " 

His face falls, all previous attempts at false levity evanescing with a quiver of slack lips and a tremor of earth eyes. Tears fall from Morgan's eyes, fat and blindingly bright as diamonds, and she wipes them away the same way he's always done for her; her fingers cling desperately to the rough, cobalt stands at the back of his neck and she rubs at the soft skin under his eyes with her dust covered thumbs as she blinks away searing tears of her own. 

"Y-you're right," he hiccups, coughing up another spray of scarlet. "I'm a terrible hero," Morgan admits with another rueful smile, another sad laugh. He was always smiles and giggles, even at times like this. This boy breathes and bleeds laughter, and the irony only makes Cynthia cling to him tighter. "At least," he adds weakly, "at least I was able to save the world." 

"Wha-?" she breathes, and his chuckle cuts her off, lighter than the last, yet more painful than any she's ever heard before. 

"Did I ever tell you your eyes are the color of the sky?" he blurts, and Cynthia blinks blankly. "They match your earth colored hair. You're like the world, so beautiful and alive." 

Her jaw drops, words trapped somewhere between her mouth and her heart. 

"You're _my_ world, actually," he adds softly, an almost shy smile curling up at his blood painted lips. "So I guess I can die knowing I at least saved the most beautiful world I've ever known." 

She stares at him for a heartbeat-long eternity, then her arms are flung around his shoulders before she can think to stop herself. Morgan winces, but takes her hug in stride, forcing ragged breaths past the thick coughs in his throat. Cynthia cries laughter into the curve of his neck, smiles tears into fabric of his coat. She pulls back only to meet his gaze, tearstained eye to tearstained eye, and whisper, "Even if you aren't a hero, you're _my_ hero. And my world and my sky and my stars and the _only_ hero to my heroine." 

"That's funny," he croaks, "because I always thought you were the only real hero between the two of us." 

"That's probably more than I deserve," she admits. "But if it's you, Morgan, I'd be or do anything." 

"Then, would you kiss me?" he asks. The innocent request catches her off guard, but she doesn't consider it too hard; there's hardly any time to consider it before all she can consider is: his lips are dry and soft and he tastes like blood and dust, like the paths they used to race down as kids and the sun that caressed them on that riverside in the spring when she realized she loved him. He tastes like Morgan and his face is sticky with tears and blood, but there's nothing about him that isn't everything she's wanted in a storybook tale life. 

Morgan ponders one last thing against her lips: "Maybe I'll redeem myself in the afterlife. I'll watch over you like a true hero." and when Cynthia tries to kiss the thought away with muttered _I love you_ 's, there's no response. Her mouth feels like metal and the dust that made up the clouds that were the size of their childish dreams, and she wipes her drying tears away with the hands stained in her dead hero's blood. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Maybe you'll see me around, haha.


End file.
